Playing Counter-Attacks? Guardiola: I Didn’t Want to Do This Either, But Arsenal Performed Better

After a 1-1 away draw with Arsenal, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola stated that although the team conceded a goal in stoppage time and lost three valuable points, he was satisfied with the mentality and resilience shown by the entire squad amid a busy fixture schedule and injury troubles.

On the Match Result

“If we don’t talk about what happened this week, we can’t analyze it—we had tough games against Manchester United and Napoli. Credit to the team and their resilience. When you’re not efficient enough in pressing, the game always gets difficult. I think this result is fair.”

“We had a few transition attacks, but I think Arsenal performed better. This result is better than last season’s (against Arsenal) and better than last week’s result against Manchester United, so we’ll take it.”

“They played better, and we were tired. We had a tough game against Napoli, and after that, it took us four or five hours to get to London. It was really tough, but we got through it. We had to be mentally very strong, and we were.”

“We were very fatigued, and John Stones, Sergei, Aït-Nouri got injured one after another—Husniddinov was injured too.”

On Using Counter-Attack Tactics

“We tried not to, but when the opponent plays better and we have a player like Erling Haaland who can run with great power, we have to do it,” he said.

“Remember how many counter-attack goals we scored with Leroy Sané, Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne? I would rather not do this, but in games at this level, we have to.”